Buoyant Star was the largest cargo ship of the va'Rin fleet," Lord Straik says, crossing his arms. "Whatever cargo it has on it, it should belong to my family."
"Except the laws of salvage declare that whoever finds it at this point gets to keep it," I point out. Even I know that. “You get forty percent. Not more."
The mesakkah lord turns and glares at the screen, a pensive look on his face. "We'll see."
7
JADE
I'm fast asleep in my room when Alice wakes me up, shaking my shoulder. There's a look of worry in her big eyes, and her heart-shaped face is lit up with a mixture of excitement and fear.
I know that look, and I sit up the moment I see it. "A ship?"
"A ship," she agrees. "A big one."
"I'll get dressed. Get the others and have them come to the bridge?"
"I'm on it, cap," Alice says in a jaunty voice, racing away again before I can chide her for the “cap” crack. She always calls me that and it drives me crazy. I'm the oldest of our small group, so I'm unofficially in charge. But just like Alice, I was a slave brought on ship. And just like Alice, I was a slave left behind when the others abandoned us. That doesn't make me captain of anything.
I shove my legs into a pair of pants and throw on a wrap-shirt that Ruth made out of discarded uniforms, and then I race toward the bridge to meet the others. My hair's a mess, but it can wait a little. I need to see what the situation is first. I race down the silent, empty halls of the Buoyant Star, my bare feet slapping as they hit the ground. When we were first left behind, I found the ship creepy. It was so deserted and empty it felt like a tomb. But after three years of this, it no longer bugs me.
It's home. As much as we have one anymore.
The doors whistle open as I head onto the bridge. The Buoyant Star's bridge is enormous, every bit as big as a spaceship this size deserves—at least to my unknowledgeable eyes. It's got enough seating for twenty, each with different control panels and button set-ups. There's a captain's chair in the center of the room (complete with its own set of controls) and one massive wall is a view out into space. Most of the time, we see nothing but stars. I can see Alice is there with the others. Ruth's slouched in her favorite chair, her long legs stretched out in front of her, black hair falling in front of her sulky face. Helen sits across from her, legs delicately folded, and there's a look of such excitement on her perfect features that it sends a surge of adrenaline through me.
"A ship, Jade! Are we excited?" She gives me a bright smile, waiting on a verdict.
"I don't know yet, honey," I say. "Let's see what we've got, first." I move toward the window, gazing out. The ship's the size of a lemon on the massive screen, but as I watch, it's getting closer and closer. "How long do you think we have, about an hour?"
"I think that's about right," Alice says, coming to my side. She crosses her arms under her breasts and regards the sight with me. "They've been hailing us, so they absolutely are coming for us."
I stare thoughtfully at the approaching ship. I don't ask Alice if she hailed them back. I know the answer to that—we don't know how. We only know how to use a handful of the buttons on the wealth of controls on the bridge. We've been floating, stranded in space, for years now and we still can't speak or read a lick of the language. No one's here to teach us, and the computer won't acknowledge us in the learning programs because we're cargo.
I study the ship, trying to compare it to the others we've run into. Most of those ships have been smaller. I don't know much about spaceships, so I always compare things to fishing, since it feels like we're stranded out in the biggest ocean ever. The Buoyant Star is like a whale, floating alone on this edge of the universe and in a class of its own. We've run into a few ships of different shapes and sizes, the biggest being the size of, say, a dolphin in comparison. Impressive on its own, but nothing to the “whale” we're